Death penalty no deterrent to murder

I couldn't agree more with your Sept. 27 editorial. A moratorium on executions "is not the final answer."

The only final answer that makes public policy sense is to abolish the death penalty altogether. By eliminating the death penalty while retaining the sentence of life without the possibility of parole, the state of Illinois would save hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. This savings would come at a time when that money is desperately needed for public schools, teacher pensions, law enforcement and services for crime victims and their families. Those are programs that have been starved for funding and that can actually help make society safer and fairer.

The death penalty does not make society safer. A recent survey showed that 87 percent of the country's leading criminologists believe that abolition of the death penalty would have no significant effect on murder rates. Police chiefs, in a national poll, ranked the death penalty last in their priorities for effective crime reduction.

And Illinois knows from experience that its criminal justice system is far from infallible. Recent exonerations remind us that the only reliable way to avoid executing an innocent person is not to impose the death penalty at all.

Having the death penalty on the books does nothing to help society or crime victims. It's time we got rid of it and put that money to better use.

Todd Ruder

Schaumburg